Eddie Cantor, Richard Pryor, and my mom. It would be the funniest lunch in history.

Best piece of advice you ever received?

Don’t bring your troubles to work.

Disciplined or hot dog?

I don’t talk about my sex life.

Have you ever been defeated by a genre?

Yes, poetry.

Which classic author would you like to see kicked out of the pantheon?

I’m a Communist, so I’d prefer to burn the entire pantheon.

Are you okay with blood?

Only menstrual.

Who is your imagined audience? Does it at all coincide with the real one?

I write for two people: my older daughter Roisin (she’s my conscience) and my best friend and co-conspirator, Mike Sprinker (he’s dead but I still talk to him every day). Just for them.

What country would you want to be exiled in?

Anywhere but North Korea and England (where I was an exile for seven years).

What’s your favorite negative emotion?

Hatred of privilege.

Is your study neat, or, like John Muir’s, is your desk and floor covered in “lateral, medial, and terminal moraines”?

I write in an anarchist den with two eight-year-old kids.

What is your go-to shoe?

I’m so shabby that a student once offered me a handout. But in my closet I keep a pair of Johnston & Murphys and another of Ducker and Son, handmade in Oxford. On the other hand, I may have misunderstood the question.

What’s your poison?

Bacardi limon and fresh tangerine juice.

What’s your problem?

Defining what my problem is.

Title of the book you’re probably never going to write, but would kind of like to get around to?

Setting the Night on Fire: L.A. in the 1960s.

What are you so afraid of?

History.

How long can you go without putting paw to keyboard?

Forever. Writing is too painful. Like Dashiel Hammet, I’d prefer to make martinis for Lillian Hellman.